


The Plot Twist

by alexcat



Series: Cap-IronMan Bingo - 2019 (1) [5]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, F/M, Fix-It, M/M, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Past Sharon Carter/Steve Rogers, Plot Twists, strangeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-02
Updated: 2019-06-02
Packaged: 2020-04-06 20:50:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19070437
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/pseuds/alexcat
Summary: Steve fixes things.





	The Plot Twist

**Author's Note:**

> For the Cap - Iron Man Bingo square - plot twist

Steve told Bucky goodbye and stepped onto the platform. He did the things he was supposed to do, returned the stones where they were supposed to go. The task had not been an easy one, but Steve Rogers had always been a very determined man. 

Then he left on that journey to get a life for himself. 

He went back to 1970. 

It was a strange time. He’d read a lot about it on the internet. The Vietnam War was still raging on. Young people protested a war that they believed unjust. Men had walked on the moon the previous year for the first time. And in California, a man named Charlie Manson scared an entire nation out of its complacency in two bloody nights. 

He arrived at Camp Lehigh in New Jersey. 

He stalked around the place quite silently. He saw Howard Stark from a distance. He peeped in on Peggy in her office. She was still beautiful even after 25 years had passed. He hoped she was happy. 

Then he spotted Tony. He followed him, watching him talk to Howard Stark. Before Tony caught up with the Steve Rogers that came with him, he walked up beside Tony. He was dressed exactly like the other Steve was. 

“I’m not the Rogers you came with.” 

“I kinda figured that out when I saw him in the distance.” He pointed to Steve on the other side of the compound.

“Do you know why I’m here?” 

“I’ve got a pretty good idea,” Tony said as they walked away from prying eyes and listening ears. 

“Do you?”

“I know what we were to one another before Siberia. I think you’ve come back to try to save me from doing something stupid when we face Thanos.” 

“You could say that.” 

Steve thought of the steamy nights in Tony’s bed at both Avengers Tower and the headquarters in upstate New York. He was bendy and strong, but Tony had taught him things he hadn’t know existed. He had come to take Tony away from death. 

“Come over here, where they can’t see us.” Tony stepped behind a truck. He turned to Steve and kissed him. Steve had not actually expected that. 

“Hurry up! We have things to do.” Steve was trying to hurry him before the other Steve found them. 

“What do you mean?” Tony looked confused. 

“You’re not going back with him. You and I – we are going to stay here.” 

“But I’ve got the Tesseract!” 

“Get it to him, then let him go. We have things to do, deadlines to meet.” 

Tony looked confused still, but he trusted Steve so he went along with him. He gave the other Rogers the case and told him he’d catch up in a moment. He knew that Steve would go on without him if he needed to. 

Once he’d delivered the case, he turned to Steve. “Now what?” 

They arrived at a place in the mountains of New York. There was a house nestled in the forest. It looked rustic, but it wasn’t at all. It was modern in every way, even getting its electricity from a small arc reactor. It was completely off the grid though. It looked like a log cabin. 

“What is this?” Tony said as they looked around. 

“I told you that I had no intentions of giving you up. Pepper got the government to pay me my back pay from 1945. It turned out to be a tidy sum, enough to buy this place. I had Banner and Rhodes help me outfit it with Stark tech – I told them it was a belated wedding present for you and Pepper.”

Tony looked stricken for a moment then he smiled. “I must die in the future – in the battle with Thanos.” 

Steve nodded. 

“You do. I decided that I didn’t want to live without you. We worked out the best time to nab you and bring you here, now, so we didn’t risk messing up any timelines. As long as we stay here together and do not affect the world in any meaningful way, our timeline should run in the same place and time as the current one. Or something like that.”

It never occurred to Steve that Tony might feel like he’d been hacked and removed from reality. He had helped plan it all, after all, though he wouldn’t remember that part. 

It didn’t. 

“What about Pepper? Morgan?” Tony asked. 

“They’re fine. Morgan will always remember you. Your friends and her mother will make sure of that.”

“Did we plan this together?” They walked up to the house and Steve unlocked the door. 

“We did.”

It was furnished much like the house he’d shared with Pepper and Morgan. He saw the annex off the back, out the kitchen window. It was his workshop and Steve’s studio. 

Tony turned to him. “I missed you, Steve, all those years we were apart. I tried to be a good husband to her and I gave her the child we both wanted, but we were better as friends. I longed for you and she knew it.” 

“I felt the same. I tried to be with Sharon for a while, but it wasn’t fair to her. I let her go.”

“So what now?” 

“Well, you’re Edward Anthony and I’m Roger Stevens. We’re independently wealthy and reclusive. The first thing I want to do is take you into that bedroom and get those clothes off of you. I’ve been waiting a long time.” 

Tony followed him, not bothering to argue or ask questions. He knew he was home, too, here with Steve. 

Steve was where his heart had always been.

*

The years passed and Tony died in his sleep one night at the age of ninety-five. Steve was the equivalent of a man in his eighties. He got his shield out and the last of his Pym particles and he went to tell Bucky and Sam goodbye and give Sam his shield. 

He told them he’d been happy and showed them his wedding ring. He let them assume whatever they wanted to. 

He would join Tony someday soon, he hoped.

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I know I created another timeline but, um, so did Marvel. The science might not work but as far as I can see, that is okay, too, since Time   
> Travel does not exist at all.


End file.
